Dunstan Thompson
by George J. Dance Dunstan Thompson (August 30, 1918 - January 19, 1975) was an American/English poet.Phillip Trower, Brief Biography, Dunstan Thompson Poems 1950-1974]. Web, May 5, 2013. Life Thompson was born in New London, Connecticut, the only child of Virginia Leita (Montgomery) and Terry Brewster Thompson. He was educated at St. Mary’s Annapolis, Georgetown Prep in Washington, Villanova prep in the Ojai valley of California, and Canterbury prep school in Connecticut. He began writing poetry in his final year at Canterbury. In 1936 he went to Harvard University, where he served as editor of Harvard Monthly. He studied under Robert Hillyer and Theodore Spencer, both of whom encouraged his ambition to write poetry. In both 1938 and 1939 he spent a month in Rye, England, studying at a summer school for poets run by Conrad Aiken. Aiken took to Thompson, whom he described as "the cleverest" "honest and psychologically alert," and introduced him to T.S. Eliot (whom he visited both years). Thompson left Harvard in 1939 without a degree, and moved to New York City, where he lived for the next three years. Mentored by the poets Oscar Williams and Horace Gregory, he contributed poetry to numerous magazines, and even founded and funded his own literary magazine, Vice Versa, which ran for three issues, from November 1940, to January 1942, and which he edited with his friend from Harvard Harry Brown. He joined the U.S. Army in 1942 during World War II, first serving in a medical unit, but then (thanks to Brown's influence) joining the U.S. Office of War Information in London, where (in the words of Aiken) he succeeded in "getting to know All the Right People in two seconds flat." His Poems ''was published in New York in 1943, and (in a revised form) in London in 1946.. Some of his poems were translated by Borges shortly after. In 1947 ''Lament for the Sleepwalker, another book of poetry, was published in New York. Both Lament for the Sleepwalker and Poems were reviewed favorably in a number of publications, including Poetry.Jameson Fitzpatrick, "Dunstan Thompson and the End of Love," Lambda Literary, Mar. 22, 2011. Web, May 5, 2013. After the war Thompson travelled in the Middle East (an experience he wrote about in his 1951 travel book, The Phoenix in the Desert), where he met Philip Trower. He and Trower then settled in the United Kingdom, moving to the village of Cley-next-the-Sea in 1948. Thompson would remain in Cley, except for a month in 1950 spent in Italy, for the rest of his life. A lapsed Catholic, in 1952 he rejoined the Church. In 1954 his one novel, The Dove with the Bough of Olive, appeared. Subsequently he published little, and virtually disappeared from literary circles. He published less than 10 poems, in magazines like The New Yorker and The Paris Review. He continued to write prolifically, though, completing three new collections of poetry, which he was unable to get published. His health began to deteriorate in the late 1960s. He died in early 1975, after being bedridden for most of the previous year. Recognition Ten years after Thompson's death, his executor, Philip Trower, published his unpublished poetry as Poems. 1950-1974 (Paradigm Press, 1984). Thompson had instructed in his will that his earlier collections were not to be reprinted; but a handful of poems from that period were included in the 2010 remembrance, Dunstan Thompson: On the life and work of a lost American master.Search results = Dunstan Thompson, Abe Books. Web, May 5, 2013. Publications Poetry *''Poems''. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1943; London: Secker & Warburg, 1946. *''The Third Murderer: Poems''. London: privately published, 1944. *''Lament for the Sleepwalker''. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1947. *''Poems, 1950-1974'' (includes The Seven Levels of Troy, The Way of Peace, The slave kings of Delhi, and additional poems). Bungay, UK: Paradigm Press, 1984. Novel *''The Dove with the Bough of Olive''. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1954. Non-fiction *''The Phoenix in the Desert: A book of travels''. London: John Lehmann / Travel Book Club, 1951. Translated *''The Song of Time: An English poem adapted from the French of Marguerite De Navarre''. Cambridge, MA: Cosmos Press, 1941. Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat. Search results = au:Dunstan Thompson, WorldCat, OCLC Online Computer Library Center Inc. Web, Mar. 22, 2015. See also *List of British poets *List of U.S. poets References *''Dunstan Thompson: On the life and work of a lost American master'' (edited by D.A. Powell & Kevin Prufer). Warrensburg, MO: Pleiades Press, 2010. ISBN 978-0-9641454-1-2 Notes External links ;Poems *Dunstan Thompson at Kingdom Poets (2 poems) *Dunstan Thompson Poems, 1950-1974, complete, by subject ;Books *Dunstan Thompson at Amazon.com ;About *Dunstan Thompson and the End of Love at Lambda Literary *"The Poetry of Exile", at Image. *"The Prince of Atlantis Revisited: Theatrical subjectivity in the poetry of Dunstan Thompson" at Angel Exhaust. *"The Necessary Minimum: Dunstan Thompson slides out of the shadows", by Clive James, at the Poetry Foundation *Revisiting Vice Versa, by Dana Gioia *"Two Poets Named Dunstan Thompson," Hudson Review Category:1918 births Category:1975 deaths Category:American poets Category:Harvard University alumni Category:LGBT writers from the United States Category:Gay writers Category:20th-century poets Category:English-language poets Category:English poets Category:Modernist poets Category:Poets